


The Night Wears On

by crwatters



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Christmas, Drarry Hell Secret Santa, Hogwarts Eighth Year, Hogwarts being sneaky, Hurt/Comfort, I'm Bad At Tagging, Kind of a drabble, M/M, Merry Christmas Nag, Mistletoe, Nightmares, not really - Freeform, the cursed child doesnt exist
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-27
Updated: 2016-12-27
Packaged: 2018-09-12 14:15:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,375
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9075505
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crwatters/pseuds/crwatters
Summary: It's 8th year, and Harry continues to have nightmares from the Battle of Hogwarts. Nighttime strolls have become his medicine of sorts, and he still struggles to live with the price of victory. But perhaps Hogwarts thinks he needs a reprieve in the spirit of the holidays, or at least a companion in his pain. Why else would she steer him towards a certain blonde in a certain corridor on a certain night?





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Nagini-Linguini](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Nagini-Linguini).



> Merry Christmas Nagini-Linguini, I hope you enjoy this! I enjoyed writing it ^.^  
> (also sorry it took so long...)(but hey! here we are!) 
> 
> Please let me know if you believe anyone to be OOC or if I made any errors of any sort, and I will try to correct them.

_Lights flashing. Screams and curses fill the air. Running, no escape. Voldemort laughs, ‘You misssed one, Harry, I live still, and you die. AVADA KEDAVRA!”_  


“NO!” Harry shouts, awaking with a start. Gasping, he wipes sweat from his brow and shakily sits up. Another nightmare. He glances at his house mates. Still asleep. Good.  


Well, except for one.  


“ ‘ou ‘right mate?” Ron asks sleepily. Ron had decided to stay during the holiday break, Harry knows, because he and Hermione thought Harry shouldn’t be left alone.  


“Fine, fine. I’m fine… just, just another nightmare.”  


“..’nother? Shite mate.”  


“Yeah. Go back to sleep Ron, you need it.”  


Muttering a sleepy “you too”, Ron rolls over. Harry, on the other hand, sighs lightly, and gets up. Sleep, he knows, is beyond his reach- at least for the next few hours. He pads out of the dorm, feet silent from an unfortunate amount of practice. The stone is rather cold beneath his feet as he descends the stairs to the common room, but Harry decides not to go back for his slippers. He needs all the distractions he can get right now, and a wintery chill is an excellent one.  


He pauses in front of the dying common room fire, but then heads for the portrait hole anyway. Movement is his best bet- staying still will only invite more nightmarish thoughts. No need to further imprison himself in his mind.  


Stepping through the portrait hole- again with the silence and care only months of practice can instill- Harry heads out into the comforting halls of Hogwarts. Without direction, without purpose. Just as he likes it. Hogwarts will take care of him, he knows. She always has.  


The portraits all sleep, or are drunk beyond all belief. There are no witnesses to his pain except Hogwarts herself.  


Harry walks past the site of one death after another- numb to it all, yet noticing them with an acuteness only one who has witnessed such horrors can. After the last battle, he learned all their names, and coordinated with Headmistress McGonagall to get each and every one a plaque, at the least. He stops by Fred’s plaque, and runs a thumb over his name.  


Hermione found his ‘obsession’ with the fallen unhealthy at first, but he only ever found it necessary. The fight wasn’t his alone- he sees that now. Harry wasn’t the only one who died, he wasn’t the only one who lost friends and family, and he certainly wasn’t the only one who paid the price. Yet he knows he’ll be the only one history really remembered. The Boy Who Lived Twice.  


Snarling, Harry abruptly rises from Fred’s plaque and stalks off.  


It wasn’t supposed to be like this.  


So much was lost. So _many_ were lost. How can any victory be worth this cost?  


But it was, it is, it _had to be_. Otherwise, all the sacrifices he walks by each and every day would be in vain.  


_This is what they call a hollow victory_. The thought rises unbidden to Harry’s head and he swats it away.  


It was a narrow victory.  


It was a costly victory.  


But hell, it was a victory.  


So much could’ve gone wrong. There was so much at stake, so much risk, what if Dumbledore had been wrong? What then?  


_I would be dead. We all would be. Dumbledore had NO RIGHT to keep those things to himself.. He-_  


Harry catches himself, and shakes his head. He’s been down that road before. There’s nothing he can do, no time turner to change things. It’s done. Over.  


And yet, he is as angry as a fucking hornet.  


Prowling through the castle, he whirls, growls, and raises a fist to punch a wall. Then stops. Groans. Lowers his fist and tears through his hair. Hogwarts has been damaged enough.  


“Finally losing it, Scarhead?” someone drawls from behind him. Harry whirls to face the unmistakable owner, Draco Malfoy.  


“What the hell do you want, Malfoy?” Harry growls.  


Malfoy tiredly lifts one dainty blonde eyebrow. “What do I want? You’re the one who almost punched a wall. If I was the Prophet, there’d be three gossip columns written by now, Potter. The Boy Who Lived Twice.” Malfoy scowls, “What a ridiculously optimistic name, ‘The Boy Who Lived Twice’- the skip right over the fact you died and make you immortal. If-”  


“SHUT UP MALFOY” Harry yells, but he isn’t sure he means it. No, he means it. Harry is angry, and Malfoy is infuriating, just standing there giving voice to some of Harry’s irritations without ANY sort of consideration or filter, and DAMMIT. “YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT IT’S LIKE, SEEING THAT SHITE IN THE PROPHET AND _KNOWING_ WHAT HAPPENED. YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND THE _COST OR ANYTHING_. AND TO WALK THROUGH HERE, _DAY AFTER FUCKING DAY_ , AND SEE IT. YOU DON’T _KNOW_ WHAT IT’S LIKE TO WAKE UP IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT AFTER _ANOTHER_ DREAM ABOUT VOLDEMORT AND TO- TO- YOU DON’T _KNOW_ WHAT THIS IS LIKE!”  


With all the weight of someone who was _there_ , Draco Malfoy whispers, “Don’t I, Potter?” and whirls around and down an adjacent hallway.  


Harry Potter pauses, dumbfounded and feeling the slightest bit idiotic. Then all his pent-up rage and energy comes rushing back, and he charges after Malfoy. Malfoy hears him coming, and turns to face Harry, but doesn’t try any evasive maneuvers.  


They collide, and Harry throws punch after punch, but Malfoy does nothing except take it. Eventually, Harry notices, and stops. Malfoy is pinned underneath him, and upon examination, has circles under his eyes identical to Harry’s own. Green eyes meet silver, and for a second, both are still and quiet. Then-  


“What the hell is wrong with you, Malfoy?”  


Draco smirks ever so slightly. “I could ask you the same thing, but then we’d be getting nowhere. I suppose it hasn’t occured to your thick skull yet that I was there too, and perhaps I’m up at this ridiculous hour for the exact same reason you are?”  


Harry’s eyes narrow, but then he sighs, exhausted, and warily clambers off Draco and allows him to rise. Draco tiredly dusts off his robes and eyes Harry with the proud wariness only a Malfoy could muster. Noticing Draco’s abnormally disheveled appearance and new collection of bruises, Harry scratches the back of his head, sheepish.  


“Why didn’t you fight back?”  


“What would be the point?”  


“Right…sorry, I guess…”  


Another moment of silence. Green and silver.  


“...you know, I was almost a Slytherin.” Draco looks at him like he’s insane, and then comprehension dawns.  


“We actually have a lot in… common” the two men say in near-perfect unison. Surprised they look away. Harry knows his ears are red, and thinks he detects a slight blush on Draco’s cheeks. An unknown force draws Harry closer to Draco, and he notices the blonde’s lip is split.  


“Mal-”  


“Draco.”  


“What?”  


“Call me Draco.” Draco looks at Harry again, then averts his eyes once more, nervously tugging on his own sleeve.  


Harry, meanwhile, is a little unnerved, but continues with what he had started to say. “Right, er, Draco, your lip is, er split.”  


Despite himself, Draco chuckles hollowly, “You’re looking at my lips? Now? After you punched the living daylights out of me?”  


Stammering, Harry tries to come up with some sort of explanation. “W-well…”  


Then something catches Draco’s eye and he looks up. His eyes widen, then he snorts. “Bloody mistletoe, this night just keeps getting better and better… perhaps I’m the one who’s finally gone insane…”  


Harry looks up and sees that, there is indeed mistletoe above them. Not just hanging above them, as if put there by the decorators earlier in the week, but _growing_ , quickly and unnaturally.  


“She wants us to...kiss?” Harry tilts his head and frowns.  


“Who?”  


“Hogwarts.”  


Draco blinks. “You are insane.”  


Harry shakes his head and smiles a little, “Aren’t we both?” Then Harry leans forward, grabs Draco’s shoulders, and kisses him on the mouth.  


And after a second of shock, Draco kissed him back.

And at that moment, Hogwarts knew that two of her favorite boys would, eventually, be okay.

 

Needless to say, Ron’s reaction that morning when he heard the news was priceless.


End file.
